Note: Readers hoping to avoid spoilers may wish to skip this review. Julie Carrick Dalton’s novel The Last Beekeeper, set in a world that has “come undone,” is the story of a young woman trying to understand her puzzling past as she navigates an uncertain future. Four years after aging out of the state care facility …
While reading The Devil’s Element: Phosphorous and a World Out of Balance by Dan Egan I happened to come across this article in The New York Times about a growing crisis along the Cape driven by antiquated septic systems. According to the article: More waste also means more phosphorus entering the Cape’s freshwater ponds, where …
Philosopher Albert Camus summed it up best when he wrote: “The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.” The books we’ve highlighted below include a number of writers, including our reviewers, who are trying to do just that. We hope you enjoy the reviews and that you support these amazing writers. …
When I look at visitor stats for the past year, EcoLit Books has seen a steady increase in the number of daily visitors. We now average just over 200 unique visitors per day, with many days surpassing 300 and a few days over 500. For a website devoted to environmental and animal literature, these are …
As a fan of the Rachel Carson Center I was excited to see the recent launch of the first edition of Springs, their new environmental journal: The Rachel Carson Center (RCC) is pleased to announce the launch of Springs: The Rachel Carson Center Review. Our new open-access online publication features peer-reviewed articles, creative nonfiction, and artistic contributions that …
Here’s an opportunity to be a part of a very special anthology… The call is for nonfiction or fiction writing that conveys one clear and unified message: that our oceans are worth fighting for. To help restore a culture of inspiration and reverence towards Earth’s oceans we are looking for masterfully woven stories from a range of perspectives—from marine …
We’ve mentioned these amazing residencies in the past but deadlines are coming up for the year ahead and I wanted to mention them again — also since I suspect many of us are eager to go somewhere, anywhere… Friends of Lakeside Lab 2020 Writer in Residence (Iowa) As in the past, the residencies will take …
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, February 2022 (Published in the UK as The Sea is Not Made of Water) Life Between the Tides is my kind of book. British author, Adam Nicolson, grandson of Vita Sackville-West, sets out to write about tide pools and the intertidal zone, but those subjects turn out to be just launching …
In 2016, we began compiling lists of the best books we read that year (new or old, it didn’t matter). And now here we are in 2021, and we’ve got another wonderful list of the best environmental books we’ve read this year. These may not be the books you’ll find in the top lists of …
So much of animal activism is focused around what one sees — witnessing the beauty as well as the suffering of the animals we share this planet with. But what about focusing less on one’s eyes and more on one’s ears? In Listen, We All Bleed Mandy-Suzanne Wong has compiled a rich array of essays …
In the book Animal Resistance there are a number of illustrations by the artist Sue Coe. And it turns out that Sue was interviewed last year by The New York Times. “My plague obsession started with the meat industry,” she said. Since the 1980s, the artist has produced series and books documenting the conditions of animals …
Few people have done as much to protect whales and the waters they live in than Paul Watson. Founder of the Sea Shepherd Society, Watson has devoted a lifetime to quite literally going head-to-head with whalers in oceans around the world. Watson is also a powerful writer, with numerous books to his name over the …
Here is an excellent writing opportunity for young writers passionate about the West. Tom Bell founded High Country News in 1970. The Bell Prize honors thoughtful writing about the West by writers aged 18 to 25. We’re looking for stories about what it means to inhabit the Western U.S. at this time in history, whether …
I’m pleased to mention that EcoLit Books contributor The Center for Humans and Nature has published a five-book set called Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations. Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations is a lively series that explores our deep interconnections with the living world. These five Kinship volumes—Planet, Place, Partners, Persons, Practice—offer essays, interviews, poetry, …
Upon reading the synopsis, Richard Girling’s The Longest Story appears to take on an ambitious task: cover the relationship between humans and non-human animals throughout all of history in under 400 pages. Yet somehow Girling, a veteran environmental journalist, is successful. Though The Longest Story does almost exclusively favor Western humanity and culture, Girling provides …